Time is going so quickly! Taylor is already 18 months old and I'm already 27 weeks pregnant with Kaia. I can hardly believe we will have two kids in just a few months! There is so much to be done before she arrives! I can't wait to get started on some of the bigger projects I have on my list to do list for the summer.

Update on Taylor... Running non stop, singing and dancing often, and throwing tantrums when she doesn't get her way. Our little stubborn spit fire is getting so big it makes me a little sad. Her speech is slowly, but surely progressing. She has said a few more words and is making new sounds pretty consistently. She will be reevaluated for speech in July so we'll see what happens then, and if speech therapy is necessary.

Update on Kaia... This pregnancy is going really well, but really fast. Probably the only negative thing I've experienced has been occasional heartburn, but other than that it has been a breeze and a joy! I love feeling her move inside me and have even enjoyed feeling her hiccups. This week I have my 28 week check up where I will have my glucose test done (yipee...). I have started to gain a little more weight, but still not doing to bad. Hopefully as the weather gets nicer I will find the motivation to go for walks and stay active.

I also have started sitting two new families since the last time I posted. I am up to 9 kids total now, but most of the time they aren't at the same time. They come and go at different times and are all part time so it hasn't been to overwhelming (yet). The extra money has definitely been nice too, of course!

Well despite the fact that it's been over a month since I've written, I don't have much to say so I guess that's all for now!

We had our ultrasound last Friday and we found out we are expecting another girl! We are so excited! I was actually kind of thinking it was going to be a boy, but I guess I was wrong, and that's fine with me! I thought this one was a boy because this pregnancy has been very different. With Taylor I had morning sickness, and a craved tart, cold, fruits. With this baby I didn't have any morning sickness, and I have craved chocolate, cinnamon sugar, and other sweets. I guess what they say about cravings is wrong!

So, We have another girl! We have decided to name her Kaia Joy (pronounced k-eye-ah) which means "pure happiness" Trav actually found the name this time too which I like! We knew we like the name Nolan James for a boy. We had this name picked out when we were looking for names for Taylor. I also knew I wanted to use the middle name Joy after my oldest sister Melissa Joy who died when she was three days old after my mom delivered her prematurely. We decided to try and find a K name for a girl so if we had another girl she would have the same initials as me. KJF. I thought it would be cool to do this because Taylor has the same initials as Trav. TMF. So Kaia Joy it is!

BEST OF ALL!!! She is whole and healthy!!! No cleft or any other issues! This made me even more sure that we picked the right name, because pure happiness is what I felt when I found out she is healthy! After our ultrasound we were in the waiting room waiting to be called back for our doctors appointment, and I cried for a minute or two. The relief was just so overwhelming I couldn't help but cry in joy! So now we just get to relax and enjoy the time until Kaia comes!

My sister had her baby last week too! The labor had a few complications, but after 11 hours a beautiful little boy was born! Landon James weighed 7 lbs and was 20 inches long! Hopefully he and Kaia will be good friends as they grow up!

We have recently started to work on potty training with Taylor. Originally I wasn't planning on starting to work with her until April, but I put her on the potty a week or so ago and she didn't fight it and went right away so I figured, maybe she's ready! I haven't been doing anything super consistent with her yet, but she's doing pretty good. We've had good days and bad days, but considering we haven't been doing it long I'm pretty proud of her. Yesterday I got her some Teddy Grahams for a reward when she goes on the potty and finally tonight she went on the potty again (we'd been having a dry spell for a day or so)! She got her reward and went and sat down and went pee some more! Therefore, she got another Teddy Graham, then proceeded to sit back down! lol. She didn't go a third time, but I think the Teddy Grahams are going help! I want to also get her some cloth training pants so she can feel when she's wet but not get pee all over the floor!

Taylor has also started making some new sounds since we've been working more with her. She has been making /g/ sounds and /d/ sounds more. Today when I was carrying her down the hallway she saw a picture of Trav on the wall and pointed and said 'dada!?' it was so exciting! She has also started to say 'ohh' when something bad happens, it's pretty cute! Maybe even more importantly she has also started to somewhat try and mimic things I say too. Most of the time it doesn't really sound like what I said, but it's the same number of syllables and with the same inflection. In the next week or so I want to buy a book I found on amazon.com that has a bunch of different activities to do with kids to encourage/enhance speech development, and also get the DVDs that go with the book. We'll see if they make a difference.

On a different note, I'm just about 19 weeks pregnant and we have our ultrasound to find out the sex and make sure everything looks ok on Friday. It's hard to believe I'm almost half way done already! I'm really excited to find out what we are having, but I'm also nervous that something might be wrong. Hopefully my fears will be put to bed once and for all on Friday!

Today Taylor had her 15 month check up with her cleft team. It is nice to get it all done in one day, but man, it's a long day! We have to be there by 8 am and it's an hour and a half drive so we have to leave by 6:30 am which means waking up at 5:30 at the latest! She saw her plastic surgeon and everything looks great with her palate! She had a hearing test and did well with that as well! The ENT checked her tubes and they looked great and also checked her nose and throat and said those looked good as well! The only thing there was some concern for was her speech. It was hard for them to really know how she's doing when she barely said anything while they were observing her. This was very odd because at home she is never quiet! She is always walking around singing and babbling while she plays. She says wow, mama, dada, bye bye, and has said uh oh a couple times. I realized after we got home that she also makes a 'g' sound now to which is exciting for a cleft baby!

The speech pathologist wanted me to call our local Birth to Three program and have them evaluate her. She said they may not take her, because she does babble a lot, but wanted to see if they would. I called and left a message and the coordinator called me back. One thing that she said that was odd to me was that they don't consider cleft an actual reason to need speech therapy, because cleft babies (according to her) usually develop the same as other kids speech wise. Also while I was on the phone with her Taylor was in the background jabbering away and the speech lady said she really doesn't think she will need it, but she is going to send me some paperwork to fill out and she will come and evaluate her. She will come to our house to evaluate her which will be nice cause hopefully Taylor will act more like her normal self to give them a more accurate idea of where she's really at. So we will see what happens when she gets evaluated. In the mean time I am going to make more of an effort to have specific play times with her and start reading books that encourage speech as opposed to just story books. I am hoping these small changes will make the difference!

Baby #2... I am almost 14 weeks pregnant now and doing well! Acne is still there, but a little better, and I do have a nice bump going. I also have started to have somewhat of a sore back which is no fun, but i'll try to get to the chiropractor soon and see if that helps! I can't wait to find out what we are having!! Only 6 more weeks!

I am just about 12 weeks pregnant with baby #2! I had my 12 week appointment today and everything is looking great! My doctor tried to hear the heartbeat with the Doppler, and was 'fishing' around for a few minutes (which was making me a little nervous) she finally caught it for a split second, but then it was gone. She tried finding it again, but baby was moving to much and she couldn't find it again. (we did hear a little kick though!) She she suggested a quick ultrasound just to make sure everything was ok. Trav and I had both heard the heartbeat and the kick so I was confident everything was fine, but it's always fun to get to see the baby! So we went into the ultrasound room and saw our beautiful baby! He/she looked much more 'baby like' this time compared to our last ultrasound so it was nice to see eyes, and fingers, and even the nose in the profile shot! Most of all though it put our minds at ease even more to see the little heart just beating away! It was to early to see if this baby has cleft or not, but if I had to guess I don't think it does. When we saw the babies profile and could see the nose and lip I'm pretty sure the nose is sticking out farther than the lip! When we had our ultrasound with Taylor you could see that her top lip was rounded out (it always reminded me of Homer Simpson's mouth), but as far as I/we could tell this baby's lip looks like it goes straight down from it's nose, so I'm hopefully, but trying not to get my hopes up at the same time. I have one more appointment before our 20 ultrasound, so hopefully the time goes quickly! I'm so excited to start decorating the nursery hehe!

Symptoms... I have actually been feeling pretty good this pregnancy. I have started taking my vitamins with dinner so I don't really have any nausea. My breasts have been a little sore as of last week, but they aren't horribly sore. In my opinion my worst symptom is my acne. I feel like I'm 16 again and I feel disgusting, but hopefully my hormones will level out soon and it will get better!

Update on Taylor... She is getting into this more everyday as she has now figured out how to climb onto the couch. She is still signing well and saying da-da which we are very happy about! In total she says wow, dada, mama, bye bye, no no, and other babbling sounds. She has her first speech evaluation in a couple weeks so I'm hoping she is where she needs to be as far as speech is concerned.

Well off to change a dirty diaper and pee myself for the forth time today...

It's been a couple weeks and a lot has happened!

Baby #2.... We had our ultrasound and got to see the baby's heartbeat! It was very reassuring to see! The biggest news, however, was that I was only 8w3d along instead of almost 10w like I thought. Now my official due day is Aug 8, 2011. I am now 10w1d along and have been feeling pretty good. I have nausea every once in a while and my breasts have gotten bigger, but still aren't really sore. I have my next appointment on the 21st and I'm hoping we'll get to hear the heartbeat via doppler at that appointment because I'll be just about 12 weeks.

Vacation... We went to Florida last week with my family and had a really good time. We got to take Taylor to Disney World and she had lots of fun! It was so fun to see her reaction to everything! The only bad part about the trip was that all three of us were sick with colds the whole time, and ended up getting several of our family members sick by the end of the trip. Other than that we had a great time and I can't wait to take Taylor back when she can really enjoy things! We also took her to the beach for a little while. She liked the waves until one knocked her over and she liked the sand as long as it wasn't on her! hehe. It was also such a blessing to be able to go for very little money, my parents were able to get us a week at the resort for free and they paid for our meals and tickets to Disney. There is no way we could've gone without there help and we so appreciate it!

Taylor... has been learning new things like crazy lately! She learned to do the actions for "patty-cake" while we were in Fl, and is so cute doing it! She knows 5 animal sounds! (dog, monkey, cat, lion, cow) She is also doing sign language pretty consistently! She knows 'more', 'eat', 'milk', and 'please'! We have started working on thank you, and drink so we'll see how quickly she picks them up! She also says bye-bye, and makes D sounds! These are huge accomplishments for a cleft baby and we couldn't be more thrilled! We are working on having her say just da-da for Trav so we'll see if she gets it! She has her first speech evaluation early next month so we'll see what they say. I'm pretty nervous that she will be behind (why I don't know), but we'll see what they say.

It's Christmas Eve! I can't believe how fast this year has gone! So much has happened and next year should be even better! We aren't doing much for our little family for Christmas. We got Taylor a few things but most of them were things she needs (sippy cups, snacks, onsies, diaper cream hehe). She will be getting spoiled rotten by the rest of our family so we tried to be more practical and save our money for our trip to Florida.

Trav got to bed late tonight so I'm hoping he will wake up with enough time to have Taylor do her presents tonight since we have to leave for my parents house as soon as he's done with work in the morning. I'm hoping she has fun reactions to the things we got her. Next year should be really fun when she's a little older and will be able to understand what's going on a little better.

I am also looking forward to teaching Taylor the true meaning of Christmas. Trav and I decided that we aren't going to have Taylor believe in Santa. We just don't really see the point considering it's not what Christmas is about anyways. I'm hoping that next year we will start the tradition of reading the Christmas story every year.

I did have my first OB appointment today. So far everything looks good, but we didn't have an ultrasound done today which I was kinda bummed about. I was hoping for even just a quick one to see the heartbeat and make sure everything is measuring ok. We only have to wait a little while longer to have one so that's at least helping. We go in on Thursday to have one done. I feel kinda bad cause I made Trav come with me today cause I figured we'd have an ultrasound and I wanted him to be there especially if we got bad news. So now he gets to come on Thursday as well. So we get to wait again, but thankfully this week will be busy so hopefully it will go fast! I have been feeling nauseated just about everyday so that has made me feel more reassured at least, my breasts still don't hurt which is kinda weird, but at least I've got some symptoms!